Standing Out

Social networking (Facebook, Biznik, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) for business is all the rage right now, and while “trendy” things are usually frowned upon, you need to be where your target market is, trendy or not. Social networking will not only increase awareness of your product or service, it could lead to sales and to those priceless business connections we all need.

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So I followed Andy Sernovitz’s advice (admittedly, I followed it partially) and I have to say that I did not get addicted to Twitter, and so now I will officially become a Twitter Quitter. The only part of the advice I admittedly didn’t follow was to “follow” as many people on Twitter as I could. I just didn’t have the time (or inclination) to go through people’s profiles and find others to follow. Too tiring!

Here’s what I discovered: keeping up with the social media crowd is exhausting! This is a lot to ask of any small business owner. As a means of marketing your business or getting the word out, trying to do the social media thing is just beyond me. I use MySpace and Facebook for FRIENDS, and the nice thing about it is that if I don’t log on for a few days, no biggie. My friends have plenty to do besides just listening to me rant or rave about something new. Adding the blog has been great - I’ve expanded my circle of influence and I’ve also gotten a lot more hits to my business website. But beyond the blog and my other marketing methods, and actually doing work for clients, I was tiring myself out trying to figure out how to make Twitter worth it for me.

I also discovered that Twitter simply takes too much time! Yes, they’ve made it more convenient with a feature that lets you text your little updates to Twitter, rather than logging into the website and updating it there, BUT, convenient though it may be, it is not less time-consuming.

So, being the generalizing woman that I am, I am going to go out on a limb and say that social media works for social media gurus and junkies. They have the perfect audience: other social media gurus and junkies. And it also works for people like Andy Sernovitz (who I love) and Seth Godin (who I also love… “marketing-threesome”, maybe? ;-), who are definitely considered experts in their field and who had a huge following before Twitter was even conceived. Twitter also works for people who enjoy reading the little updates of random people they don’t know, OR, who simply enjoying updating people they don’t know about their own random thoughts. Twitter is also popular with the TED crowd. I had never even heard of TED until I joined Twitter.

There are some things to be thankful for. Here is the list.

Thank you, Twitter, for…

1. Introducing me to TED. Very cool.
2. Making me feel proud that Andy Sernovitz became a follower of mine. That, really, was my only goal.
3. Giving me exposure to another very popular social media tool.
4. Aiding in the realization that social media tools aren’t part of my ideal marketing cuisine.

Cheers, folks! Have a great day! By the way, if you haven’t checked out Twitter, check it out! Seriously, you should try it. You might learn something new like I did!

Tia

(I’m also done with Blogjet…but that’s for another blog)